1. Field of Art
The present invention generally relates to the field of healthcare services, and more specifically, to managing healthcare products or services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Despite advancements in healthcare services, many healthcare consumers do not visit healthcare providers for routine care. Frustration with wait times, appointment availability and lack of feedback from healthcare providers discourages many healthcare consumers from pursuing medical care until treatment is necessary. While healthcare consumers desire to maintain a high level of health and wellness, inconveniences associated with receiving healthcare services typically cause healthcare consumers to postpone preventative or routine healthcare services.
Conventionally, healthcare consumers contact a healthcare provider to schedule an appointment for visiting the healthcare provider's office for treatment and then supply the healthcare provider with demographic information, such as medical history or insurance information, while visiting the healthcare provider. Because healthcare providers seek to maximize the number of healthcare consumers seen and the variable time for many healthcare procedures, despite scheduling an appointment in advance, healthcare consumers frequently encounter long wait times when visiting a healthcare provider. These long wait times inconvenience many healthcare consumers, causing them to postpone healthcare treatments until necessary because of injury or illness.
Additionally, to provide high-quality healthcare services, or related services such as pharmaceutical services, service providers need efficient and reliable access to various types of healthcare records. However, healthcare records are generally maintained by various sources which often use a proprietary or unique format to maintain healthcare records. For example, any one of a hospital, a healthcare organization, a clinic, a lab, an insurance company or a pharmacy may need access to healthcare consumer information maintained by a different source. The different data storage formats can delay retrieval of data by different healthcare services because of overhead associated with reformatting retrieved data.
Additionally, individual healthcare providers, or other service providers, generally maintain healthcare consumer information and other healthcare records in a format designed for retrieval or access by the specific healthcare provider, or other service provider. This proprietary storage of healthcare consumer information and other healthcare records makes it difficult for healthcare consumers to seamlessly visit different healthcare providers or other service providers by complicating retrieval of healthcare consumer information or other healthcare records from different healthcare providers, or other service providers. Although healthcare consumers are increasingly mobile and often interact with various healthcare providers, or other service providers, retrieval of healthcare consumer information by different local, state, regional or national healthcare providers, or other service providers, is complicated by the presence of political issues among entities, the lack of cooperation between competing entities and the storage of medical information or other healthcare records in different formats by different healthcare providers and other service providers. Additionally, healthcare consumers currently have limited control over the type of information shared between different healthcare providers or other service providers.
Thus, conventional methods of obtaining healthcare services inconvenience healthcare consumers with long wait times and limited availability for services while making sharing of healthcare consumer records between various healthcare providers, or other service providers, involved in healthcare consumer treatment difficult.